[EO Arizona] Building Scalable Businesses Through Documentation and Delegation With Chris Ronzio

Chris Ronzio is the Founder and CEO of Trainual, a SaaS platform that helps small and growing businesses document, organize, and share their processes, roles, and training materials. Before launching Trainual, he built and sold a national video production company and led an operations consulting firm focused on business efficiency. Chris also hosts the Organize Chaos podcast and authored The Business Playbook, which offers practical guidance for building scalable, process-driven companies.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[3:19] Chris Ronzio shares why he began writing The Business Playbook before launching Trainual
[5:50] The early struggles selling only three lifetime deals of Trainual
[6:28] Customer feedback that shaped Trainual’s accountability and reporting features
[7:40] Building role-based training bundles and interactive knowledge checks
[8:21] Key roles Chris prioritized when relaunching Trainual in 2018
[11:21] Scaling past 100 employees while sustaining company culture
[13:56] How the MAP system helped Chris strengthen his leadership and management skills
[23:59] Positioning Trainual between LMS, wiki, and knowledge base tools
[25:05] Chris explains how the Delegation Planner helps leaders map roles and responsibilities
[43:08] How the Phoenix Suns and Mercury use Trainual for seasonal staff training
[46:45] Hospitality and global adoption of Trainual across industries and countries

In this episode…

Scaling a business often feels like juggling people management, processes, and growth all at once. Many entrepreneurs get stuck doing everything themselves, which stalls progress and burns out leadership. How can leaders create systems that free up their time while empowering teams to succeed?

According to Chris Ronzio, a seasoned entrepreneur and bestselling author, the key is documenting and delegating with clarity. He highlights that every business has a unique playbook made up of its brand, products, policies, and processes, and codifying this knowledge ensures consistency across teams. The result is stronger accountability, smoother onboarding, and the ability to scale without bottlenecking growth. Chris explains how early struggles shaped his focus on building tools for role-based training, feedback loops, and culture-driven leadership. He emphasizes that creating repeatable systems is what allows founders to step back and focus on long-term strategy.

In this episode of the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Chris Ronzio, Founder and CEO of Trainual, to talk about building scalable businesses through documentation and delegation. Chris shares the lessons from his early product launch struggles, explains how customer feedback shaped Trainual, and discusses the importance of core values in scaling culture. Chris also gives insights on partnerships, leadership development, and empowering teams to take ownership.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Quotable Moments

“I saw everyone has this formula for who they are, what they do, and how they do it.”
“I had three friends that agreed to buy me my tool like a lifetime deal.”
“The feedback was that they wanted the accountability of like, you know, I hire people.”
“It’s hard to manage people if you didn’t articulate it or explain it correctly.”
“We’ve always been really tight, and so growing up we were never really competitive.”

Action Steps

Document your company’s processes and policies: Capturing workflows ensures consistency, reduces mistakes, and makes onboarding far more efficient.
Delegate responsibilities with clear accountability: Creating ownership empowers employees, improves performance, and frees leaders to focus on strategic growth.
Build role-based training playbooks: Tailoring content by position equips each team member with relevant knowledge for faster ramp-up.
Reinforce culture through core values: Embedding values into daily operations sustains alignment, motivation, and collaboration as the company scales.
Invest in leadership and peer learning groups: Surrounding yourself with experienced mentors accelerates decision-making and strengthens long-term business growth.

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Episode Transcript:

Intro: 00:02

Welcome to the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, where we feature top founders and entrepreneurs and their journey. Now let’s get started with the show.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 00:12

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here cohost of the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, where we feature inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders in EO. Also. Chris. So I always before I formally introduce Chris of Trainual, you can check him out at trainual.com, some other episodes people can check out of the podcast. So I had creating heart centered experiences with Joey Goone.

This actually relates to Chris’ past business. Joey goes around, he does a lot of the EO events. So I met him at one of the big EO events like Central Region events, and he was running all of the video crew stuff. And so just an awesome guy. And so I had him on the podcast.

I had “Delegate, Elevate, Transform: Unlocking EOS® With Kevin Hundal”. Speaking of Gino, Wickman was also on the podcast of traction. If people have heard of EOS and Traction. I had Boost your sales team’s productivity with Robert Hartline. He started he CEO of Call Proof.

He’s in Nashville and he built up a chain of cell phone stores. Chris to like $100 million business then sold it. And then he also had because he wasn’t busy enough, a separate SaaS company called Call Proof. So those are all interesting interviews. Check them out on Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast.

And this episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. We do this in two ways. One, we’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the strategy, accountability, and the full execution.

Number two, we’re also an easy button for companies gifting. So we make gifting and staying top of mind for clients, partners, prospects and even staff. Simple, easy. And it’s important to us for it to be affordable. You just give us a list of your people.

We do everything else and, you know, create the gifts and everything’s has your logo on it and everything like that. So, Chris, we kind of call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background, that make it stress free for a company to build amazing relationships. And for me, I found no better way over the past 15 years to profile the people and companies I admire on the podcast and send them sweet treats in the mail so you can go to rise25.com or email us at support@rise25.com. I’m super excited about today’s interview. Not just because he’s good at pop shop, but because Chris is the Founder and CEO of Trainual.

Trainual is a platform which transforms how businesses onboard train and scale their teams. Okay. He’s a lifelong entrepreneur, and he helps leaders document and delegate effectively. He’s also the best selling author of the business book The Business Playbook: How to Document and Delegate What You Do So Your Company Can Grow Beyond You. So big shout out to Mike Caito who introduced us who runs MAP.

So Chris, thanks for joining me.

Chris Ronzio: 03:08

Thanks for having me. You talked to some cool people. I feel honored to be here.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 03:12

You’re cool to hold up the book for a second and talk about I mean, you’re busy enough. Why’d you write the book?

Chris Ronzio: 03:19

So I actually started writing the book before founding training. I was working one on one with a lot of entrepreneurs behind the scenes in their business and kind of picking apart their operations. And I saw everyone has this formula for who they are, what they do and how they do it in their business. And you’d package together your brand, your products or services, your stories, your policies, your processes, your people. And all of this became like your company’s guide, your manual, your playbook.

And so I started working on this book. And then I thought, you know, let me push this software out there. Let me focus on that. And I waited until we had a few thousand companies in the tool to validate. What are people actually putting in their playbook?

And then circled back and said, okay, let me make the playbook for how to document and grow your business. What is everything you should probably write down. And that was the project.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 04:10

Talk about, you know, early on we’ll get to the I have questions about the video crew days. That seems like a a really hard business because there’s so many logistics involved. And I think you had, I don’t know, 300 or so projects or videographers like running around doing different events and you eventually sold it, but then you started doing consulting and you, you know, you’re like, okay, how do I make this super sticky? And let’s build a SaaS for the consulting business? And initially, it didn’t get exactly the traction that you wanted.

Can you talk about the early days of training with your consulting business?

Chris Ronzio: 04:46

Yeah, so I had sold my video company and we can dive more into that later. But I had sold the video company I was consulting for entrepreneurs. I started this little newsletter and I was putting out tips on how to make your business more efficient. And then I had this idea for Train You’ll. And the more I thought about it, the more I started to build it out.

I thought, okay, this is a goldmine. Like I’ve got all these people paying me big cheques to do the services in their business. Of course, if I have a $99 product, I’m going to sell it hundreds or thousands of times, like no brainer. And so I built this whole marketing sequence, and I put together these videos, and I read books on how to do a big product launch. And I blasted it out to my newsletter list and said, guess what?

I’m a software mogul. I have this like software tool. Everybody’s going to want it. And it was like crickets. I had three friends that agreed to buy me my my tool like a lifetime deal for the tool, and at that time I just realized, like, if.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:41

Only they had Product Hunt at the time, you would have sold a lot more. But those lifetime deals are killer, right? Whoever’s on it. Yeah, they still got a great deal.

Chris Ronzio: 05:50

They still have it. So. So I sold three. And then I thought, I guess I should just go back to consulting. And so I was just kind of on the shelf and it became something that I gave to every consulting client I worked with.

And they would get it for free for six months, and then they would start paying for it if they wanted after that. And little by little, we built up a few dozen companies. And that was kind of my R&D talk about.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:13

What was the feedback you were getting early on that helped shape what we see now with Trainual. And by the way, if people are listening to the audio, I’m going to pull up the site just so people can can see that as well. But what was the feedback you were getting that helped shape it?

Chris Ronzio: 06:28

The feedback was that they wanted the accountability of like, you know, I hire people, I tell them things, but I don’t get any validation that they’ve read it, that they’ve seen it. You know, I might send a Google doc, I might send an email, but I didn’t have that feedback loop. And so early on, the thing we added was just that ability for someone to acknowledge something. And it saves the time and date stamp. And you’ve got a basic report that, yes, they did see the thing that you want them to see because it’s hard to hold people accountable.

It’s hard to manage people if if it’s on you, if you didn’t articulate it or explain it correctly. But if you can close that loop and say, yes, here’s where I showed you. Here’s when I showed you, here’s when you acknowledged it. You can be a better manager. And so that was one of the first things.

After that it was, how do I bundle together training by someone’s position in the business. You know, like I have a different set of things that I want our sales reps to know and a different set for our receptionist and a different set for my assistant. And so bundling and rolls was one of the early things. And then it was.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:34

You could see this here. If you go to product, you can kind of probably see like here’s the roles and Responsibilities piece.

Chris Ronzio: 07:40

Yeah yeah yeah. It’s still in there. And then it was you know beyond just Static kind of text. How do I make this more interactive? And so how do I we embed videos and make little knowledge checks.

And so those first couple years were really iterative. It was just getting feedback from my consulting clients, making the tool a little bit better one year at a time, and then got to a place where we decided to try to relaunch it. And that was in 2018.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:07

You know, I know that initially you kind of bootstrapped it and invested like $10,000 and getting it running. What were some of the key roles you had to put in place when you relaunched it, and you started having customers on it?

Chris Ronzio: 08:21

When I relaunched it 2018, so I had the little consulting firm. We had a few people in our consulting firm that just kept supporting the customers, and then me and my assistant or project manager, chief of staff kind of like do it all sort of person. She was the first one that filled every seat as soon as it was, you know, brand new. It was like she was the first customer support person. She was the first salesperson doing demos.

She was the person that issued refunds. She was the person updating the blog post after that. My brother actually moved out to Arizona, where I am for a couple months, and he took on a marketing role to create videos and testimonials and case studies and a sales deck and all those collateral type things that we didn’t have. And after a couple of months, it was only meant to be a just a project. He got so into it that he wanted this to be his full time thing.

So almost eight years later, he’s he’s still our CMO and CRO in the company. After that, we brought our full lead, our lead engineer into the mix. And so we needed someone to oversee the product and fix the bugs and, and come out with new features. And then we hired a sales rep, somebody that could talk to customers. So those were the first five roles.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 09:41

Talk about your brother and you working together because you even worked together in the video days too. What are some things that you learned by working with your brother? Like things that, you know, complement each other, things that you overlap on?

Chris Ronzio: 09:55

Well, we know each other so well. We’ve always been really tight. We are three and a half years apart. And so growing up we were never really competitive. We were always complementary.

You know, like I played the traditional sports basketball, baseball, football. He was like the X-Games, you know, skateboarding and snowboarding and ice climbing and that sort of thing. We always had different interests. And so I was the operational systems processes kind of guy, and he was the brand and storytelling kind of guy. And so in the video business, he was just like my kid brother that I would tag along and, you know, run cables and play with the audio switcher boards and eventually started production managing events for us and then ran our LA office, and when I sold that business, he went and worked for a marketing firm in Boston.

And so he had that marketing expertise. And so it was just perfect to to reunite. We complemented each other well. I think what makes it work is that it was never a, you know, 50 over 50. Let’s just start this.

You do this half, I do this half. It was like, here is your explicit role. Here’s the position that I’d be hiring for. Here’s the salary I’d be hiring for. Here’s what the market value of that is.

Do you want that position. And so we were very clear about that from the get go.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 11:10

You know as your team grew over time, I think at this point you’re maybe over 100 people. What are some of the things you did to sustain culture?

Chris Ronzio: 11:21

Yeah, we’re almost 140 today and culture has been consistently driven by our values. But the way that we maintain culture, I’d say, changes every quarter, every six months. Like we’re always changing the frequency of our all hands meetings. The way we the questions in our engagement surveys, the way we do town hall questions like your business is constantly changing and at different sizes. Things that used to work won’t work anymore.

Like for instance, when we had, you know, ten people, 15 people, we’d stand around in the same room and do our all hands meeting when we’ve got people across different time zones. Now, you want to be more mindful of what time of day you’re doing that, and are you recording it? And how do you communicate to people that are out on PTO? And so it takes just a constant intentionality. And I think that stems from our values.

And so, you know, our values at Trainual, we can go through these in depth if you want to. But first make ideas happen. It’s all about execution. And like, you know, a good idea is one thing. But actually like taking action is, is a different thing.

So make ideas happen. Everyone has a key is about ownership and about how everybody can play a part. And we’re not victims. You know, we actually do things here. No red tape is, you know, there shouldn’t be anything in the way of you being efficient and productive.

And if if a process exists and it’s not benefiting the business, then we should tear that down and start over. Show up. Ready? That’s about being professional and not wasting each other’s time. You know, doing the homework before meetings, collect experiences.

This is like we’re all people outside of work and we value, you know, growing and pushing each other and learning things that we can bring back as a, as a collective. And then the last one is carry the groceries. And this throws back to when I was 14, bagging groceries at my local supermarket and how I used to carry groceries out to someone’s trunk for them. And it was that like little unexpected thing that just made their day. And so by going above your role, what’s expected, we can help customers.

We can help each other. And so those six things are just at the core of how the business runs. And we iterate on how it shows up through the, the processes every, you know, all the time.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 13:43

I love that Chris talk about what’s helped you as a leader. So I mentioned EO, I mentioned MAP. Talk about MAP for a second. I know we were introduced by Mike Caito.

Chris Ronzio: 13:56

Yeah. Shout out to Mike. So MAP is a incredible system for teaching managers, especially new managers, how to be managers. You know how how to be self-aware, how to know their limitations, their opportunities, how to have a cadence for how you look at the vital factors in your business and the, you know, the key metrics in your company. And so I went through map while I was in my consulting business, and it was really interesting because I was helping other businesses with their structure, but I didn’t have a ton of my own in my consulting firm.

And so turning that lens in and looking at myself really made a huge difference in my consulting business and how that started to grow. So I highly recommend MAP. They’re a great partner of ours. For me, going to workshops like that immersive kind of workshops, whether it’s MAP, EO, you know, learning days, I’m in YPO, I’ve been in, in SaaS, different groups. Being in a community with people that are a step or two ahead of you is, is like, to me, so inspiring and so motivating.

And it’s like that story of the, you know, the, the four minute mile, like when you see somebody else can do something, you’re like, okay, I guess I can do it too. And so I think it’s so important to put yourself in rooms and groups that are immersive, that show you examples of progress that’s beyond you.

[Continue to Page 2]

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 15:20

And so talk about some of your favorite books. And you mentioned SaaS groups. I know that you’ve learned from Dan Martell and he’s got Buy Back Your Time of your favorite for, you know, favorite books.

Chris Ronzio: 15:33

Yeah. Dan’s book Buy Back Your Time is awesome. Honored that Daniel’s mentioned in there. And he’s a advisor of the company and a friend. Before that, E-myth, I think is like the the one of the most foundational books.

If you haven’t read E-myth. You got to go get that one that teaches you that, you know, being an entrepreneur sounds fun and sexy, but it’s it’s not just the entrepreneur, the vision side. You also have to be a good manager and a technician. And there’s these different hats that you wear. I really liked the the one thing I think it was called that was like, you know, what’s the one thing I can work on right now?

The one domino I can knock down that leads me to the next thing that I need to work on so that that is pretty, pretty revolutionary. Recently, I read the Everyday Hero Manifesto. I loved that.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 16:21

I’ve never heard of that one.

Chris Ronzio: 16:22

So good. It’s like these really short chapters. Robin Sharma, I think is his name and it’s just like a way of living and a perspective that was so refreshing at the beginning of this year. And then one more that I’ll mention is Die With Zero. Die With Zero is a cool book that teaches you how to maximize the ROI in your life’s experiences earlier in your life so that, you know, as you get older and older, you have no regrets and there’s nothing that you that that you need to that you missed out on.

And so I we have a sabbatical at renewal. Every four years people get a sabbatical. I always give them that book with a little note in it.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:03

How does the sabbatical work?

Chris Ronzio: 17:05

It’s so everyone gets four weeks of PTO. Just as a starting point in your sabbatical. You get a couple extra weeks and you can bundle together a month to take off a month at a time. And so people will disconnect for a month and travel somewhere and, and, you know, and if they rolled over any other time, it could be a little longer than that. And so it’s it’s just a good time to recharge.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:31

Love it. Yeah. I’ll check that one out. The everyday hero manifesto. And for people listening I we did a Michael Gerber of The E-Myth on one of the podcasts Inspired Insider and also the one of the authors of The ONE Thing, Jay Papasan, and on his fantastic book as well.

I’d love to talk about partnerships and how you think about partnerships and the importance of partnerships. And maybe some of the you mentioned map as a partner, some of the cool partners that you have.

Chris Ronzio: 17:58

So partners for us spans the gamut from just affiliates that are advocates for us and want to recommend us as like a tool in their toolkit, very passively to all the way up to organizations, mastermind organizations that want everyone that’s a part of their group to have a training account, and they’re buying them in bulk. Sometimes they’re partnerships, sometimes they’re event sponsorships, sometimes they’re super complimentary offerings like we have, you know, sales acceleration kind of programs where people are hiring a group of consultants to map out their their sales plan, and they will recommend training because you need somewhere to put your sales training and your sales plan. We have communities like map where you know they are working with new managers that are coming through and doing their workshop. And then you need a system to make sure that that sticks, and that everything that you learned is reinforced and proliferates through the rest of the organization. And so partners for us are, you know, all these adjacencies in the business, whether it’s a community, a related, you know, service that to to our buyer or just a complimentary software.

Everybody that we work with is just trying to make your business run better. And it’s inspiring to just be connected to so many people that want everybody’s business to run better.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 19:24

How is AI, Chris impacted your business? Oh, man. How do you see it impacting businesses?

Chris Ronzio: 19:32

How hasn’t it. We I joke that, you know, train has an A and an I in the middle of it. And so AI’s been in training all along. It was like like it’s a Trojan horse or something. You know, you hear all these headlines about how how AI is like taking jobs, AI is replacing jobs.

And my whole approach to this is that AI is like putting on the Iron Man suit, and it gives you superpowers, and you as a person can be more productive. And so as companies, we should have an expectation that we can produce more revenue. We can be more productive with the workforce that we have. If you’re trying to eliminate your workforce, that’s a massive scarcity mindset. That means that you know, you you are putting your artificially, putting a ceiling on your business at your current level and saying like, let me reduce costs to just maintain the ceiling of my business.

And the way I think businesses should approach this is how do I arm every employee with these superpowers so that we can go five x or ten x, the size of of our business and our impact and our revenue and our profits. And so train you all relates to AI because AI is all about how you use the tool. It’s all about. Are you good at prompting? Are you resourceful?

Are you thinking about what is the best way to get this done? And the people that are going to be good at AI are the same people that were good at delegating, or having assistants, or having virtual assistants five years ago or ten years ago. You know, if if you know how to delegate and you’re resourceful, then it doesn’t matter what the technology is, you’re going to leverage the technology that’s available. And AI is just a new form of leverage for all of us.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 21:13

If you put your SaaS hat on for a second, I’m wondering what mistakes you have seen. You’ve been in different groups and you obviously experienced this personally. Some mistakes you see people making in SaaS. And I remember I had Jonny Page on one of the shows who runs SaaS Academy for, you know, with Dan Martell. What are some of the mistakes that you’ve seen in the SaaS world that people make?

Chris Ronzio: 21:40

I think one of the biggest mistakes is overbuilding you. You mentioned how, you know, we got started for $10,000 and beyond that initial investment, we didn’t put much more into it for a few years. You know, we took that feedback and planned for version two. But I’ve talked to so many entrepreneurs that are a quarter million dollars into developing their SaaS offering, and they’ve got no customers, or they’ve got one friend that said that they would use it verbally, you know, and it is a massive mistake. I think anybody that wants to start a SaaS business should be able to start it with like a dumb proof of concept on paper, and until you get people paying you for some service that you are now just making better with technology, you don’t really have a business.

So I think it’s a fallacy to think that you can, you know, if you build it, they will come. That’s, I would say, the number one mistake.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 22:34

Let’s talk about product expansion. Right. And how what’s going on as far as that with train rule.

Chris Ronzio: 22:42

So yeah train rule especially in this, this you know, new world of of AI of, you know, as soon as ChatGPT came out and, and hit the mainstream, we built that into our search and our content creation abilities. And so that’s been in the product train rule is at this really cool intersection though, between traditional like learning management system and a wiki and a knowledge base. It’s a tool that has the accountability of the legacy training and learning tools, but the bottoms up kind of content generation of a notion or a Google Docs or anything like that. And so that was how we were were started was like that. We said, you know, if a wiki and an LMS had a baby or something.

And so now you see the whole category of knowledge and training is starting to converge. And so for us, we’re thinking about what are these other touchpoints in an employee’s life cycle from the time that they’re hired through managing their, you know, their roles and responsibilities and like their promotions, their performance, their interaction with other team members. You’ve got the delegation planner up on the screen.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 23:53

Yeah, that’s what I was going to point out, because obviously right here we’re looking at beta. But yeah keep going.

Chris Ronzio: 23:59

Yeah. So this is one of my favorite tools. And it’s something that before training I just did on spreadsheets and whiteboards. When you’ve got a small team and you’re thinking about who is the next person we’re going to hire? You look at your existing employees and you think, all right, well list out what are all the things on each person’s plate?

What are we going to pluck off your plate onto this next person? How are we going to kind of crowdsource what this next role is? And then where is the training or SOPs or best practices for each of those responsibilities to train the new person once we hire them? And then which responsibilities do you like doing? Which ones don’t you like doing?

What are you good at? What are you not good at? What’s aligned with your career trajectory? And so all that can be managed in the delegation planner. So for each thing that you do in the business, you rank it and rate it and show what you like and your passion, your business impact.

And then as a manager and owner, you can drag and drop and create that next role.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 25:00

Yeah. Anything else on the product expansion side?

Chris Ronzio: 25:05

I think when you just think about like hire to retire, anything in there is fair game. It’s it’s all about change management because like, at the center of delegation here is if if I used to do something and now you do that thing, then who, who does everyone else go to for questions? How does that thing get innovated on inside the business? The change management? It all stems from who does what and how in a business.

And that’s that’s our core.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 25:34

I mean, you did this with your the video business, right? And eventually you stepped away completely. You’re I don’t think there’s a right hand person became president and CEO. Yeah. What were how did you document then?

Because this is before I don’t know if you want to, you know, give people context, but there was not I don’t know if the internet was around when you did that. I mean, maybe it was, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t it wasn’t so prevalent right at that point where people were because you were you were like selling VHS tapes. I mean, that’s I guess it’s a different time. It was I remember those big cameras, like, you put the VHS in, you plug it in, and that’s what you were using early on.

Chris Ronzio: 26:18

Yeah, totally. So when I started the business, I was 14 and it was. Yeah, it was the big over-the-shoulder cameras, VHS, VHS we were editing on, on, you know, with the dials. We didn’t have computers to edit on. It was editing on dials, but that was that was yeah, that was crazy.

So, so as the business evolved, you know, over the next decade, it went from that to live on demand streaming. And so the technology was changing so quickly that we were buying new cameras and new editing equipment every six months. We had, like you mentioned, over 300 camera operators and production managers were doing events in all 50 states. We had three offices across the country. And so we were documenting back then on a password protected WordPress site that we set up, which had a it had like a different pages for all the different roles in the business, with embedded YouTube videos for how to do certain things and the instructions.

And what it was missing was the accountability piece. Like people would look at it, we’d give them the login. We had email templates that would go out with all the login instructions, and then it was sort of an honor system that once they were trained, we would mark them as trained inside a CRM, first on Microsoft Access, and then it was in high rise, which was Basecamp CRM back then, if you remember that. And so we were just cobbling together this, this toolset of like trying to track who was trained to do what and where was the central place. They could log in and see it.

And, you know, 20 years later, training is a much better way to do it.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 27:55

I’m gonna I’m gonna pull something up real quick. You’ll get a kick out of this. Chris. So, like, there’s actually a YouTube channel that says react, and then this one is kids. So if you’re listening, you’re like, I have no idea what a VHS tape is.

They did put the VHS player and tape in front of these kids and just didn’t say anything. Just see what what they do. And it’s hilarious. You know, you can see there’s 6 million views on on this on this video, but it is very funny. Have you seen.

Chris Ronzio: 28:24

The question where you ask a kid to, like, pretend they’re on the phone and they hold it up like the equivalent of a smartphone? And you ask, you know, someone over a certain age to pretend you’re on the phone and they do the thing with the pinky and the thumb, and it’s like.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:40

They have one with, like an old school, like rotary dial phone and like on this channel. And had people had the kids like, what do you do? How do you make a call? They’re like, I’m not so funny. Yeah.

So it’s very funny. Talk about selling a company right at that point. What did you learn from selling that company? The video company that obviously then you went on to consulting then software?

Chris Ronzio: 29:02

Yeah. The biggest thing I learned was that you have to understand what’s valuable inside the company. And for the most part, you know, we’re a service company that was just doing this low margin video production work for sporting events all around the country. And so we did have recurring revenue in the form of these events where repeatable. And they were happening every year.

And so for us, what was valuable was our contracts that we had with the sports organizations. It was our crew. And like this whole database and network of crew that could go to different events. And then it was this software, this some IP that we developed in the later years where you could we uploaded videos from every event that we shot, and it created a little 32nd kind of iTunes preview, stored the video file on AWS, let you know customers search for the event, search for the the performance, purchase the video, then get emailed the file and and ultimately that was the thing that was most valuable was the tech. And so, you know, that’s the the nugget that stuck with me was, you know, processes and how we did what we did created the scale and the tech was valuable.

So what if I put tech and process together that’s.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:16

You know, that’s why I’m surprised about when I, when I look at and I’m thinking, what if I were to predict Chris’s trajectory after selling the video company, I would have thought he would have created like a Wistia, you know, Wistia, like a Wistia type, like video company. But, but but not so much.

Chris Ronzio: 30:31

And so I did have a video of a failed company in between. I’m happy to tell that story.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:35

Go ahead. Yeah.

Chris Ronzio: 30:36

So I went from my my production business to I had this big idea that video producers around the world would want to monetize their own videos. And so I created a event, Video.com, which was a platform where anybody could shoot videos, upload them, set the price, and it would mimic the system that we had and what I hadn’t anticipated is that I was competing with all these video producers in their different cities, and because they saw me as the owner, they did not want to put their productions on the platform because they thought we would steal their productions. And so and I spent over $100,000 developing that tool. And so the lesson I mentioned about, like, don’t spend all this money and hope they’ll come. Like, I felt that personally.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 31:21

It’s like like almost the Lean Startup, like pre-sell before you invest all this time and energy and money into it.

Chris Ronzio: 31:28

Yes, exactly.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 31:30

I want to hear about your events. Right. I know you in the past have done virtual events, in-person events with Trainual. You’ll you’ve talked about some of your favorite speakers. I have a question around that, but I’m going to see where you go with it.

Chris Ronzio: 31:45

All right. Favorite speakers. It’s got to be Shaquille O’Neal was super cool. Gary Vaynerchuk, Daymond John. So the first event that we ever put on, our first big event we ever put on, we called playbook because that was, you know, the category we’re sort of trying to create.

It’s the name of my book. So Playbook was our event in 2020.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 32:09

Can anyone go to it or how does it work. Because I don’t know if I saw it on your website. Exactly.

Chris Ronzio: 32:13

Yeah. Yeah. It’s if you just go to playbook.com that should take you to the current version. Okay. So in 2020 Playbook was supposed to be a live in-person event.

And then the pandemic happened. And so we pivoted to make it a free online event. We booked Daymond John as the keynote speaker from Shark Tank. And in anticipation of Daymond John, you know, one of our values show up ready was to communicate with him, tell him who we are, tell him what to expect at the event. So my brother and I shot a video.

We sent it to him and his team because we weren’t going to get to talk backstage. And his team loved it. And so he he comes on. I interview him, I show him this picture from when I’m 12, wearing a Fubu jersey, rapping at my school talent show. He’s dying laughing.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 33:06

Really? I have to see this.

Chris Ronzio: 33:08

Yeah, he’s. He’s dying laughing. We built a great relationship. He ended up investing in the business and becoming a partner in the business. And so that was our first ever event.

Since then, we did playbook year after year, built it up to five, 6000 people coming virtually. And then last year we did our first in-person event here in Phoenix. And it’s been just an incredible way to get a community together of customers, of people building businesses, of speakers. And so highly recommend events for anyone that hasn’t done it.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 33:40

What made you decide to do it? Originally, I remember I was talking to the founder of Infusionsoft. Now it’s keep I think maybe. Yeah.

Chris Ronzio: 33:49

Clay, who made me do it.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 33:51

Oh, he did, because like, when I was in Chicago, we had dinner. It was when he was like winding it down. And so or they were going to move it into more of like just for partners event as opposed to everyone. So yeah. I’m so.

Yeah. Tell that story. What did he say to you?

Chris Ronzio: 34:09

So I’m sure Clayte wouldn’t mind me sharing this now. He’s on our board. He’s been an advisor of mine for 6 or 7 years. He’s an incredible guy. Clate mask.

Shout out to him. But IT icon was their event that they invited a ton of customers to partners. They had a trade show floor, they had product announcements and there is so much vibrance and excitement that comes from, you know, bringing all these like minded people together that have the commonalities of a similar business or a similar set of tools. And so it was like this flywheel in the business for just creating momentum and referrals and partnerships and excitement about the product. And they did it for a few years.

They at some point brought in different investors that thought differently about their cost structure. And so I think it was a financial decision to change how they did the event. But Clay always said that he wishes they kept it going like, like they had. And so he was very instrumental in in getting Playbook off the ground and, and to be the event that it is.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 35:15

I mean, it’s a big undertaking, right. And if people are looking at this, this is Clayte’s book, Conquer the Chaos. So you can check that out. He I mean, he’s built an amazing company. It’s it’s pretty remarkable what they did for sure.

Chris Ronzio: 35:29

Yeah. He’s a great guy.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 35:31

So Shaq, there’s a funny story about the Shaq interview specifically. Okay. You’re in a basketball. You have Shaquille O’Neal. This is a live one right?

Like so Shaquille O’Neal is on stage with you, right?

Chris Ronzio: 35:44

Yeah. Well, no, this was live online.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 35:46

Well, live online. Okay. Yeah.

Chris Ronzio: 35:48

Yeah. So he was at his house. He was on his couch or something. And so the funny story here is we all of our cameras were hard wired up to internet and everything, and they’re shooting this this thing. I’m on this, like, this stage with all this background.

Shaq is is on this camera across from me or this this screen across from me. And all of my questions are on my iPad. And so my iPad is hooked up to the Wi-Fi as opposed to being hardwired. And so the Wi-Fi went down in the studio where we were shooting this as I was talking to Shaq. And so my question sheet just goes blank.

This whole beautiful interview that I had prepared to talk to Shaq, and I end up asking him about, like, Shazam, the movie he was in and like, like whatever, I could come up with top of mind for for Shaq. And so at one point, my brother, who’s standing off to the side of the stage, realizes that I’m just struggling, and he comes on with his own list of questions and saved my my saved the day. But it was funny.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 36:51

What did you learn from Shaq or what did you most? Were you most curious about?

Chris Ronzio: 36:56

You know, he talked about the intentionality of wealth building. And one story that he taught that I thought has always stuck with me is when he started in the league, he had this veteran guy, this this old NBA player sit him down. And he had them at a bar and he took a napkin and he took this napkin. He said, imagine this is your salary. And he tore it in half.

And then he handed Shaq the half of it. And then he took the other half of the napkin and he tore it in half again. And he handed Shaq this little square, this little corner of the napkin. And he said, this is how much of your salary you should survive on. And the rest of the napkin should be invested and put away so that you don’t end up in the same position that I’ve seen so many other people.

And, you know.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 37:45

I thought you were going to say the rest is taxes. You get this small corner. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Ronzio: 37:52

Oh, there’s probably a rip off for that too. And Shaq. Now if you if you Google it you know I think he’s.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 38:00

An incredible business person.

Chris Ronzio: 38:02

Yeah. He he has ownership in in a dozen different companies and you know, dozens or maybe hundreds of locations of fitness places and car washes and fast food restaurants. And I think a net worth climbing toward a billion.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 38:20

Well, if your events in in Scottsdale, Arizona. Count me in. Yes. Where do you usually have it? Is it local, where your headquarters are or.

Chris Ronzio: 38:29

It is, it is. You’ll have to come next time. So I, I we haven’t released the, the the dates for our next event. I think it’ll be early next year. But but yeah, it’ll be in the Phoenix area.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 38:41

How do you choose speakers? I mean, you’ve had some incredible speakers. You know, with Daymond John, you had the CEO of the Phoenix Suns and Phoenix Mercury, Josh Bartelstein and and Shaq. How do you end up choosing speakers?

Chris Ronzio: 38:55

Some of it’s just personal interest. You know, it’s it’s like, who do I want to talk to or who’s influenced me a lot in the last year or the last couple years? Some of it is just connections through our partners and people that we’re able to to link up with. And then it’s really just who’s going to have the best stories and bring the most value to the audience. I mean, we had Ali Webb from Drybar talking about how they scaled all the different locations we had.

You know, Allison Felix, who’s a Olympic runner that created a brand of shoes. She was so cool to listen to. We had yeah, just authors. Dan Martell was there. We talked about him already.

We’ve had other founders like the, the, the founders of Base Camp, which was so cool. Jason Freed mentioned having used their tools, you know, 15, 20 years ago. So just we try to get a good mix.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 39:53

Yeah. I mean, when I think of SaaS, that’s actually I think of 37 signals. I mean, obviously I’m, I’m here in Chicagoland. So they, they come up a lot for sure.

Chris Ronzio: 40:04

Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 40:05

So where do we get a video of the wrap from the talent show? So I had Greg Roulette on the podcast. And I found out that he used to rap and he he opened for Bone Thugs n Harmony. So he was like, legit. And so at the end, I.

I sprung it on him. I’m like, you don’t have to, but like, you know, let’s do something right now. He he was like, oh no, but I found an old clip on the internet and so on the interview. I clipped it on the on the back end of the interview, so I didn’t even watch the Greg Gillette interview and the back end is him rapping. So so I don’t know.

I don’t know if it’s out there on the universe, or maybe you don’t want it out in the universe, but.

Chris Ronzio: 40:47

I wouldn’t care. It was it was, you know, pre VH. It was in the VHS phase, not the YouTube phase. And so, so I don’t I don’t know that there’s a video out there.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 40:57

But listen I’ll send it to Legacy.com. I mean there’s legacy.com. It’ll convert the convert to life. Yeah. I’ll, I’ll pay for the, the VHS to convert to to to MP4 for sure.

Chris Ronzio: 41:11

It was so, so the talent show. We sang the song Money Ain’t a Thang. If you’ve ever heard that song, it’s like Jay-Z and Jermaine Dupri and my friend and I had our Fubu jerseys on, and we had monopoly money, and we’re throwing monopoly money out into the crowd. And so there’s bills flying everywhere. And our town newspaper snapped a picture of it.

And so that was the headline and the in the front page of the Gazette, the the In Our Town and.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 41:39

I love it.

Chris Ronzio: 41:39

Chris Ronzio says money ain’t a thing.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 41:43

I love it. I want to talk some use cases. How are people using Trainual? I know you’re a big basketball fan. Talk about the Phoenix Suns for a second.

Chris Ronzio: 41:53

Yeah. So it’s such a dream come true that the Suns and Mercury are customers of ours in our backyard. Like that was a huge deal. Just as a season ticket holder and a big fan here. I’ve been here 16 years now.

You know, when you get a brand like that that signs up and uses your product and it brings them value, it’s just such a cool experience. Like, this is why we’re in business. You know, you’re building something that is making other businesses better, other customers better. And when you can improve someone that you’re a huge fan of or you’re a customer of, it just feels so cool. So that’s one of my.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 42:27

How do they use it?

Chris Ronzio: 42:28

So it’s for you can imagine a sports team first of all has turnover. they have, you know, between their sales teams, there’s people who come and go. They have an arena full of concession staff and security staff. So there’s a seasonality component to when you’re, you know, the the new seasons kicking off. There’s guidelines that have to be trained because there are MBA policies.

There are, you know, league policies, team team rules and regulations. And so when you’ve got all these different layers of information to communicate, training is an amazing system for that.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 43:06

How did that come about?

Chris Ronzio: 43:08

It was really for me, just being in the stadium long enough to shake hands and get introduced to the right people. And so, you know, just hang around your prospect’s.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 43:18

Favorite basketball players of all time.

Chris Ronzio: 43:21

Jordan.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 43:22

Jordan.

Chris Ronzio: 43:22

Even.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 43:23

Oh, yeah. Because you grew up in Chicago. Yeah. So you were you there during the heyday of I Was the Bulls?

Chris Ronzio: 43:29

I was I was there for every championship. And then I moved to Boston, and I was there for all the Celtics and Bruins and Red Sox and Patriots championships. And then I moved to Arizona. It’s been a bit of a dry streak, so I’m hoping hoping to fix that.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 43:46

You’ll like one of the interviews I did on the show was with Ben Jackson. So you know the Berto Center, if anyone you probably watched The Last Dance obviously was in Deerfield, where I grew up, and I don’t know why they put it in Deerfield, but so I grew up with Ben Jackson, who’s Phil Jackson’s son. And so I had him on. He runs Right Writing Salon in San Francisco. We talked about that.

But of course, I’m like, Ben, you have to talk about some Michael Jordan stories, some Phil Jackson story, his dad. And so there’s some cool behind the scenes stories on that show as well.

Chris Ronzio: 44:19

I love that. Yeah. My my coolest Jordan story is I was four years old. The Bulls were still not flying private. This is when the teams flew commercial.

I was we were visiting my mom’s family in new Jersey, and we took like a midnight flight back, and the Bulls happened to be on the flight that we were flying home.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 44:36

Seriously?

Chris Ronzio: 44:37

Yeah. And so as they’re loading into first class or whatever, my mom pulled me aside as a four year old and she’s like, standing, waiting for the luggage. And Michael Jordan came and sat down right next to her and just they talked for a couple minutes and then we went back to our seat.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 44:52

That’s incredible. Yeah, I love it. I mean, you have a variety of use cases, Chris. I mean, you talked to the Phoenix Suns, but talk about golf course a golf course uses you.

Chris Ronzio: 45:05

Yeah, yeah. Awesome golf course here at one of the top ones in the country, Pine Canyon and the, you know, the whole Trainual system, they they use it to train everything from their, you know, pro shop staff to the food and beverage to the kids camp, to the spa, to the exercise center. You know, these are businesses that have it’s like they’re running ten Businesses under one roof. And you can imagine the training, the process, the difficulty when you lose somebody because they graduated from school and moved home. And so training and the repetition of training and the consistency of how things are done is paramount when you’re in the hospitality business.

But we have examples of trained, you know, customers across the world that are in, you know, from a CPA firm to a retail shop to an HVAC and or electrical contractor and roofing and, and car washes, people from, you know, and every, every country in the world that we’re allowed to sell to, I think it’s 196 countries at this point have have trained users.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 46:10

Amazing. Chris, I have one last question before I ask it. I just want to point people to learn more. And if you’ve watched the video, you’ve been, you know, seeing us poke around the site and if you have questions, go to the page. They have a lot of cool resources and everything on there.

My last question, Chris, is mentors. It could be distant mentors. We talked about some books, but like mentors and some lessons you learned. I mean, you’ve mentioned a few on here, from Mike Kato to Dan Martell to Clay mask Daymond John. Any other mentors that have been influential throughout your business career?

Chris Ronzio: 46:45

Yeah, Scott Fritz, who’s another guy I met through the EO world. So he was a like a trainer that came across every chapter and did learning days when I was just in the accelerator program, you know, 15, 18 years ago, something like that. He worked with me on a monthly basis and taught me a ton about just how to scale and run a business. He had a peo business with, you know, 160 employees and multi-state locations. And, you know, I’ve been really lucky to be around people that have scaled to a bunch of locations.

And that was always what I aspired to was like, if I can run a business in one place. What stops me from copying and pasting that to other locations? You know, Dave Berg, another guy, I’ll shout out, that runs a business called Redirect Health. Really changing how healthcare is done, how businesses pay for the healthcare their employees need. Same thing like opening up locations in all different states like process matters.

And if you can be successful once, why not over and over again? And so I’ve learned a lot from them.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 47:51

Love it Chris. Thank you everyone. Check out trainual.com also Chris’s book. And also if you’re interested in the event you can check out playbook.trainual.com as well. Chris thanks so much.

Chris Ronzio: 48:06

Thank you. See ya.

Outro: 48:08

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